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By Andrea Tate
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Barreling down the 101 freeway in Los Angeles, I nearly slammed on my brakes when my 10-year-old son yelled, “I don’t want to do this anymore! This is your dream, not mine!” On the seat next to him were the pages for a script he should have memorized, but he’d argued that it didn't matter. To me, a semi-retired actor, it did matter. It mattered a lot. He was auditioning for a lead role in a feature film, so he’d need to give 100%.
I looked in the rear-view mirror at his face, which showed no sign of happiness. This was not like him. I took a moment to reply.
“Okay, well, should I turn around at the next exit and call your agent?”
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My voice remained calm, but I felt my jaw tighten. I’d thought he loved booking jobs and working on sets. His overbite, raspy voice and kid’s glasses always won people over. He behaved like a pro, took direction well and got along with everyone—something I loved to see, since he was an only child who didn’t have the benefit of learning social skills through siblings. To me, being part of a cast felt like having more family.
“No, it’s fine,” he huffed. “I’ll go to this one.”
I knew it wasn’t fine. The competition would be intense, as it always was. Other kids would give their all. I was annoyed. Why was I spending my day rushing him from school to an audition if he didn’t even care to try his best?
As a single mom, I questioned my every parenting choice, constantly worrying I was going to screw up my beloved son. I knew that I wanted his childhood to be different from my own. I never felt free to express myself and my emotions as a kid. All I wanted was to be a perfect mother to my one and only son. I wanted him to feel comfortable communicating his feelings, to tell me what he liked and disliked.
But that moment in the car made me wonder if I’d failed. In the beginning, acting was fun. He loved doing school plays with his friends. On stage, he would fearlessly improvise lines when his buddies forgot theirs. Once, when a kid froze in the middle of a performance, my son ran off stage to look at the script, then returned and recited parts of the other kid’s lines to remind him what he’d forgotten. You could see the joy in my son’s eyes that he’d saved the day.
I started taking him to auditions when he was 9. He quickly started booking jobs: leads in student films, a few commercials, a role in a Lifetime movie. He co-starred on an episode of the FX show, “The League.”
Once the auditions started getting more difficult, though, with more lines to memorize, he showed obvious signs that he wasn’t into this work. We would argue about how well he was prepared, but I thought he just needed to be pushed beyond his comfort zone.
I had been an actor in my 20s. After my son was born, I would bring him to play rehearsals. He sat in his stroller with his eyes locked on the stage, laughing or sometimes making a raspberry sound if he didn’t like something. He was our tiny critic. None of the other actors had kids, so having a baby in the theater was a novelty. Right away, my agent wanted to represent him, but I held back until he was old enough to decide if it was something he wanted to do.
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Now I had to ask myself if I had encouraged an acting career because I truly thought it was what he wanted, or if it was so I could live vicariously through him as a stage mother. No one championed me as an actor. My minor successes came from hard work and heartache. When I was young, it made me jealous to see parents supporting their kids' dreams. I still remember loving dance as a kid and having to give it up because my parents didn’t have time to bring me to classes. I thought that by encouraging my son to go to auditions and book roles, I was helping him—giving him the support I’d always craved as a kid. But, in reality, perhaps I was no better than those parents screaming at their kids from the sidelines, thinking they were destined to be major league ballplayers if they just had tough love and discipline.
At the audition that day after his outburst in the car, I waited for him in the lobby, noticing the other young actors and their parents—mostly mothers. They all looked focused. When he came out of the audition, the casting director gave me a half-smile. I knew what that meant—he did a half-assed job.
In the car, I asked how it went.
“Fine,” was all I got out of him, and we headed home in traffic while he silently stared out the SUV window.
When we pulled into the driveway, he grabbed his backpack and left the remnants of his snack and his script in the car. It was time to call the agent who had been working hard for two years to build a career for him.
I plopped on the couch and let out a few sighs before dialing his agent.
“Hi Debbie, I have some unfortunate news.”
“Uh-oh.”
“He doesn’t want to act anymore.”
“Did something go wrong at the audition?”
“No, he said this was my dream and not his.”
There was silence, and then she said something to the effect that she was disappointed. I said something to the effect that I appreciated all her hard work over the last two years.
After retiring from acting, my son discovered music as a bass player. He’s in the background, supporting the band, helping everyone keep a steady beat. This was more who he was as a person—an ensemble player, not the star of the show. I didn’t understand this at first because when I was an actor, all I wanted was the lead role.
In high school, my son joined a rock band and made an album. When he decided to study music in college, it was no surprise. Since graduation, he has produced several albums with other musicians. Recently, I asked him how he feels about choosing music as a career.
“I’m living my dream life, Mom,” he said, then gave me a long hug that answered all my questions*.*
Andrea Tate is a writer and writing professor with published essays in the Los Angeles Times, HuffPost, Yahoo News and more.
All views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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